I have just realised why I always enjoy advertisements for anti-diarrhoea mediactions. It is because the advertisements uniformly focus on depicting a person who does not have diarrheoea; and of course, for reasons of taste, and the advertiser’s subtle pyschological calculations, this is not achieved by direct graphic illustration - no pictures of dry, clean bottoms here. More indirect, suggestive means are employed.
A cruder imagination would perhaps attempt this by depicting the Imodium user in contrast to a crowd of unfortunate diarrhoea sufferers. We could be shown a street scene full of stained pants and embarrassed, horrified faces, with one lucky person who is excrement-free, a pack of New Imodium Gel-Caps clearly visible in their top pocket.
But this strategy has not prevailed; the advertisers have no doubt avoided it since they know well to eschew negative images that would shame their target marked - that target market, of course, being diarrhoea sufferers.
The contemporary approach to anti-diarrhoea advertising is more subtle and more alluring. The main image now is that of a person who does not have diarrhoea, plain and simple. A smiling, happy person - man or woman - who looks us in the eye with a confident expressions that says: “My pooh is solid, reliable, and always gives me fair warning of its estimated time of arrival.”
All that in just a look, I tell you. Those advertising folks are ingenious.
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